When Franklin Roosevelt died, the Patroon Broadcasting Co. in Albany, N.Y. asked the Federal Communications Commission if it might use the call letters WFDR. The FCC, deciding that the President's initials should not be identified with a commercial venture, said no. But last week in Manhattan, a nonprofit, FM station called WFDR went on the air.
The station is backed by the 400,000 members of the wealthy, politically potent International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, headed by New-Dealing David Dubinsky. Its purpose, in the words of Frederick Umhey, I.L.G.W.U.'s executive secretary and president of WFDR Broadcasting Corp.: "To utilize radio as a vehicle for labor to tell its story."
Sudden Scramble. Union men feel that their story has been scarcely whispered on the nation's airwaves. Of the nearly 2,000 AM stations in the U.S., only one—Chicago's WCFL—is labor-owned. Established in 1926 by the Chicago Federation of Labor, WCFL's programs include broadcasts of football games, the Chicago Symphony, Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, and the Eleanor Roosevelt-Anna Boettiger show. It differs from other Chicago stations only in its vocal support of striking workers.
Though mildly successful, WCFL was not copied by other unions until the FCC's postwar decision to open a new band for FM transmitters made the gamble seem worthwhile. Publicity-conscious unions were in the forefront of the scrambling applicants for construction permits. In the past year, the United Auto Workers have gone on the air with station WDET in Detroit, and this month will open WCUO in Cleveland. The I.L.G.W.U. beams its message to the South through Chattanooga's WVUN, and last November invaded the West Coast with Los Angeles' KFMV, "the FM Voice of Southern California." Fifteen other union applications with FCC have either been turned down or allowed to lapse temporarily.
Razzle-Dazzle Start. New York's brand-new WFDR is expected to be a model of union entertainment and salesmanship. Last week's 2½hour inaugural broadcast from the stage of Carnegie Hall saw WFDR off to a razzle-dazzle start. Congratulatory messages came from India's Pandit Nehru and Chile's President Gonzalez Videla, Italy's Premier de Gasperi and France's Leon Blum. There were Verdi arias and Rooseveltian folksongs (Ballad for FDR, The Face on the Dime), and jokes by Milton Berle (see PEOPLE). Big business was represented by RCA's David Sarnoff, the Armed Forces by General Walter Bedell Smith, Government by FCCommissioner Frieda Hennock and New York City's Mayor O'Dwyer. Eleanor Roosevelt said: "I am very glad and I'm sure my husband would have been very glad that his initials will be the call letters of WFDR."